TWITTER PRANK SPURS UNEXPECTED SCRUTINY OF INSULIN PRICES

WASHINGTON—A Twitter imposter cost a US pharmaceutical giant billions of dollars, but the viral prank triggered another unexpected crisis—a new wave of scrutiny of the high cost of its insulin.

Authentic-looking fake accounts proliferated last week after Twitter rolled out a paid verification service, the latest in a string of chaotic developments since Elon Musk’s blockbuster $44-billion buyout of the influential platform.

Among the victims was drugmaker Eli Lilly, whose stock price nosedived—erasing billions in market capitalization—after a parody account stamped with a verification tag purchased for $8 tweeted that insulin was being made available for free.

The company was forced to issue an apology for the “misleading message from a fake Lily account,” but the disinformation stirred fresh attention to a long-festering debate about high insulin prices.

“What you should *actually* apologize for is price gouging life-saving insulin,” tweeted Chicago-based human rights lawyer Qasim Rashid.

“People are dying because of your greed (and) cruelty. Apologize for that.”

Cartoon meme

Gaining traction alongside such comments was a cartoon meme with a half-elephant, half-human character riling up people to be more upset about the price of insulin than the price of gas.

“Fake Eli Lilly might be offering something closer to truth than real Eli Lilly,” Peter Maybarduk, from the nonprofit Public Citizen, told AFP.

“Parody is successful when it reveals embarrassing and widely understood truth.”

In recent decades, insulin prices have soared in the United States, costing more than eight times more than in 32 comparable high-income countries, according to a 2020 Rand Corporation study.